Headstone by Ken Bruen

My review of Headstone by Ken Bruen is up at spinetingler.

Check that shit out HERE.

I don't wanna spoil anything about the latest Jack Taylor novel, but there might be some crazy killers in this one....

Blitz by Elliot Lester

My review of the movie adaptation of Ken Bruen's Blitz from director Elliot Lester and screenwriter Nathan Parker (of Moon fame!) is up at spinetingler.

Check that shit out HERE.

American readers take note: the film is currently streaming on netflix instant, so do it up toot-sweet!

The Devil by Ken Bruen

My review of the latest Jack Taylore mystery, The Devil by Ken Bruen, is up at spinetingler.

Check it out right HERE.

Believe it or not, this also fits in with my recent horror-ish October book choices of late. You're thinking, dear reader, "Jack Taylor? Supernatural horror-type shit? Have you lost your shit, Nerd?"

Well, seeing how I've been pounding back coffee all day, yes, I have lost my shit (sorry) but I'm not fucking with you in the slightest, dear reader.

Tower by Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman

My review of Tower is up at bookspot.

Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman tag team like they're the fucking Nasty Boys to give you this kick ass book.

Check that shit out right fucking here.

Sanctuary by Ken Bruen

Truth be told, I will probably never miss a Ken Bruen novel as long as I live. I mean, the guy writes short-ass books with lean-ass prose that take just a couple of hours to plow right the fuck through. Also, his books always have enough despair, humor, violence, and cussing to keep my interest piqued like a teenager at his first titty bar. But Jesus H Fucking Christ the Third: the Jack Taylor series is getting pretty fucking old.

If you don’t know who Jack Taylor is, get caught up like fucking immediately. He’s an ex-cop and unlicensed PI in Galway, Ireland with the rottenest luck of any PI in the history of a genre made up of dudes with rotten-ass luck. He gets clean from coke and booze only to plummet off the wagon with the speed of a skydiver sans a fucking parachute. Over and over again he manages to kill the wrong suspect or get his few loved ones hurt or killed from his own drunkenness or incompetence. Jack Taylor is a great twist on the hard-boiled PI genre…at least he used to be.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the only way this series could shock me now is if Taylor married a good woman, won a billion dollars in the lottery, had a beautiful baby and then they all moved the Cayman Islands and lived out their days on the beach in peaceful tranquility (department of redundancy department?). I mean, the dude just keeps fucking up to the point that it is becoming old hat.

Also, it seems every fucking book the dude runs afoul of some crazy ritualistic killer. It seems like Taylor’s Galway is made up of nothing but serial killers who want to get Taylor’s goat. Shit, every Bruen novel in the last five or six years features at least one serial killer. There are other crimes and other types of criminals to fuck around with - and Bruen has dealt with other kinds of villains in his earlier works - but lately it seems Taylor’s Galway is worse than Dexter’s fucking Miami - just fucking lousy with serial killers. And don’t get the Nerd wrong here, dear reader, I love me some psycho killer shit as much as the next man (Bruen’s own standalone American Skin is arguably one of the best crime novels of the decade and that has a great psycho running through its pages), but it’s getting to be too much.

But now you’re thinking, Nerd, for fuck’s sake, I get it. Get onto the new novel already you douche.
I hear you, Reader-with-an-inner-monologue-as-profane-as-the-Nerd’s-own-inner-monologue-for-some-fucking-reason, and I’ll do just that fucking thusly.

With Sanctuary we find Taylor still hanging onto sobriety and dreaming of leaving the New Ireland for the States. The only thing holding him back: his lesbian cop friend Ridge’s slow, drunken recovery following the removal of her breast due to cancer. Well, that and someone calling themselves Benedictus is sending him letters assuring him that certain deaths he’s been reading about in the newspaper are indeed, connected. And he may be next on the next name on the list…

But it’s not all Zodiac bullshit, dear reader, not at all. The most interesting plot thread in Sanctuary is that it turns out that Jack may not be responsible for little Serena Mae’s death after all. Jack Taylor’s old drug-dealer-turned-Zen-master friend Stewart gives him a heads up that Serena May’s mother Cathy admitted in rehab that she was the one who pushed her daughter out the window (because she couldn’t handle the fact that the child was born with Down’s Syndrome) and placed the blame on Jack. So now Jack is free from his soul-crushing guilt for once in a long-time, but the guilt is obviously (and rightfully) replaced with pure rage. Either one can get a man back on the Jame-o, naturally.


So it’s a pretty substantial installment in the series, with events that actually move the overall arc of the series as a whole forward quite a bit and makes the Nerd wonder if maybe the end is in sight. I’d be sure as shit be happy if it were so, if only so Bruen could give Jack (and his fans) a fucking rest already. But like I said up top, it seems I’ve got a couple hours to spare for a Bruen no matter how many fucking serial killers I have to put up with.

Ken Bruen's ONCE WERE COPS (The Nerd Rage Edition)

I've posted many a rave review about Ken Bruen on the site and I'm sure some of my devoted readers (there has to be a couple of you out there) were wondering just when the Nerd would get off his ass and review Once Were Cops, the latest book sure to win "the Ryan Adams of the crime fiction world" yet even more fans. Well, I'll tell you what was up with the delay, dear readers, I'll tell you toot-fucking-sweet:

I waited for it to arrive at my local library.

Now you're saying to yourself: Nerd, what the fuck? Why don't you support Bruen monetarily? You dig his books and want him to keep on trucking so why don't you cough up the fucking bucks already?

Well, my answer is this: Have you looked at the hardcover of Once Were Cops? It is the biggest waste of trees I have ever seen - and I was a creative writing major (I may have just lost some peer editors with that one...)! His epigrams that appear before every new chapter apparently have to appear on the right-hand page and same goes for the beginning of the fresh chapter. Therefore, if a chapter ends on page forty-one you have a blank forty-two, an epigram on forty-three, another blank forty-four, then finally the new chapter on forty-five. That is three wasted pages, seeing how the epigram could just have gone on the new chapter page! What the fuck!?

And then there's the actual layout of pages themselves. There is a space between every paragraph - and loyal readers know that Bruen RARELY does paragraphs anymore so in other words there's a space between every fucking sentence! American readers have become used to this from St. Martin's hardcovers of his Taylor novels, but never to this ridiculous extreme. It has gone too far, I say! Too bloody fucking farrrr!!!

Okay, I have collected myself. Deep breath.

Let me offer an alternative, good people at St. Martin's: Why not do mass market (the horror!) versions with tricked out covers and designs for Bruen's books for awhile. I mean, the dude seems to shit awesome novels and now has a pretty sizeable base of readers - so why not? If you use some creative juice, it could be a whole new thing in publishing.

And I'm not saying you should totally rip off Hard Case either.

Nobody does mass markets that look sharp and wrap around the spine the way they do with hardcovers and trade paperbacks anymore - so start the trend. Enough with this 22.95-for-a-"three-hundred"-page-book-when-we-all-fucking-know-it's-more-like-a-one-fifty-page-novella-at-best bullshit. The economy's a little tight, and therefore the book budget is tight too. Keep this up and we're gonna look elsewhere.

And don't give me the "quality over quantity" bullshit. It doesn't float here. I have to pay the same price for a Carol Higgins Clark for dear old gram as I do for a Ken Bruen therefore there is no fucking quality over quantity argument. It's about the product, the weight, the dimensions, the materials, the shipping, etc. Don't fuck with me, youse.

Ooookaaayyy.

On to the actual review! Waddaya say?

Once Were Cops is some solid shit, a nice break from the steadily increasing bleakness of the Taylor novels and the steadily increasing ridiculousness of the Brant novels. We follow young Shea as he makes his way from being Galway Guard (after a brief chat with Jack Taylor, establishing that the novels are in the same world, for those who don't remember) to the NYPD thanks to some dirt he has on a corrupt Galwegian politician. There he is partnered up with Kebar, a dirty Polack cop with one of them attitude problems.

Turns out both these fellas have some nasty secrets.

Shea's is that he is a serial killer whose MO is strangling pretty women with swan-like necks with green rosary beads. Kebar's is that he has a beautiful sister with a swan-like neck and a mind like a five-year-0ld living in a fancy nursing home, an expense that Kebar pays for with his mob money. Wouldn't you know it? These two secrets collide!

It's sick, dark stuff that reads hyper-fast and, thanks to Bruen's knack with rules-be-damned-post-modern-surprises, is...surprising. It will no doubt win him some new fans and please old ones, but it isn't the opus I've been reading about as I waited for the library to buy the damned book already. No, that title still belongs to American Skin, the greatest use of Bruen's gifts thus far.

However, it should be said that there were a few quibbles I had with some of Bruen's "Americanese," some dialogue in particular that didn't ring true (a certain character saying "tarnation" made me wince), and the timeline gets murky in the middle of the novel (Shea's romance with Nora progresses really quickly and how long is Kebar off on a bender?)...

But that said, this is probably the most satisfying of his novels since American Skin so yeah, it's pretty solid stuff, almost worth the trees needlessly wasted in its printing (wow, that reads harsh if you just skipped to the bottom for a recap).

Catching Up #15: RILKE ON BLACK by KEN BRUEN

My pimping of Serpent's Tail books continues with Rilke on Black, Ken Bruen's debut novel. Before I get into it, dig that awesomely homoerotic cover. I wish the copy I'd picked up had that cover so that people would think I was reading some sort of strange gay erotica (clearly of the rape fantasy kind). I mean, I'd already been harassed by people in coffee shops thinking I was a homophobe for reading a book called Fags and Lager so why not even everything out by looking like I was totally gay? Serpent's Tail certainly goes out of its way to make things socially awkward for the self-conscious American male reader, you've got to give them that.

The story of a kidnapping gone awry (is there any other kind of kidnapping?), Rilke on Black is classic Bruen. It is obsessed with high and low pop culture, filled with sharp dialogue, spare in its prose and dark, dark, dark. But there are some things that definitely set it apart from what was to come later.

What fascinated me the most was how Bruen's use of pop culture quotes - lines from poems, songs, novels and films - actually had a reason for being in the book for once. I mean, I'm not against Captain Epigram's insistence on half of his short-ass books being quotes from other works, but I always just thought that he was doing early period Pelecanos on crack or some sort of hyper-Tarantino impression (check out what I like!) in his writing. In Rilke on Black Bruen's references actually mean something.

It's a bit of a revelation, honestly.

In my view, Bruen's debut is, like all British novels, about class, specifically through taste. It's the ultimate hipster crime novel in a way (as if any of his others aren't). You have the three kidnappers who all represent different kinds of culture. Our hero, Nick the bouncer, is trying to make himself seem somewhat posh by reading tome after tome of low-brow bullshit via a little thing called Reader's Digest (you've seen it at your grandma's and yes, you have read the Humor in Uniform joke section at least once, admit it). Then you have Dex, the psychopathic hard man, who is like the ultimate hipster with his vast knowledge of movies and TV shows and other middle class staples (he's your Rob Gordon, if you will).

Then there is Lisa, the femme fatale who likes to quote poetry and other hoidy-toidy stuff, your genuine posh item - though she is later revealed as a total phony, only classing it up to show off to her object of desire/kidnappee Ronald Baldwin. Ronald is the real deal in posh, he may be black and an apparent hard man of sorts, he can quote all the classics and annoy the shit out of you like the best of those professors you wanted to stab with you no. 2 in English 101.

So in other words, Bruen tosses off quotes and references galore per the norm, but all the while I felt like they weren't just Bruen doing an unsubtle Oprah's Favorite Things list in the story. It felt like he was actually trying to say something with his pop culture madness, bring up a point about class and, ultimately, about the crime novel itself. This book feels like Bruen's thesis about the neverending pulp vs. literature argument, the ultimate point being there sure as shit is room enough for both.

Okay, so The Nerd got off on a bit of a tangent and got all literary on you (I'll speak in the third person if I want to, fuck you) but this book is pretty great. Hell, it might actually be the funniest of Bruen's novels which is saying something, considering how hilarious the Brant novels. Also, Brant shows up in the book as a detective, but I get the feeling that it isn't BRANT himself. If it is supposed to be, he certainly doesn't really fit with the official series stuff. If anything, it proves that . . . Bruen enjoys the name Brant, I guess.

Also, the language isn't quite as pared down as it eventually becomes in his later books. It's still fucking lean, but Elmore Leonard lean, not James Ellroy lean.

So, conclusion time:

Read this book. It is good. I went on a tangent about high brow shit above because I like to show off my learned-ness. The end.

THE MAX by Ken Bruen & Jason Starr

The demented duo have completely lost their minds.

The third in their Max & Angela trilogy for Hard Case Crime is undoubtedly Ken Bruen and Jason Starr's most gleefully insane and self-refefential book to date. The Max is a prison novel, travelogue, revenge story, struggling writer tale, and sly tribute to their literary friends all in one book. Also, like Slide and Bust, it is sick, violent, nihilistic, funny, and just plain fun.

The book starts out with the increasingly deluded and stupid Max Fisher adjusting to prison life in Attica after having been convicted of numerous charges in Slide. After his crack high wears off, Max is initially scared to death, the promise of ass-rape is thick in the air, but then word gets out about the dick removal Max was (barely) party to in Slide and suddenly he is a prison legend with everything at his disposal. To inflate his hilarious ego even more, a struggling "cozy to middle-boiled" writer named Paula (whose boobs are up to Max's high standards) has decided to become the next Anne Rule, figuring Max's story is her ticket to the big bucks.

Meanwhile, Angela has been looking for love in Greece, where she eventually comes upon a self-styled playboy named Sebastian, a trust-fund Brit Boy who bears a stiking resemblance to Lee Child. The two end up involved in the murder of Angela's Greek landlord and Sebastian makes a break for it, finding Angela's murderous ways a bit too much for him. From there Angela ends up in a sexy Greek prison full of hot lesbians and Sebastian is pursued by the landlord's revenge-minded cousin.

Needless to say, through hyper-fatalistic-super-noir coincidences, eventually all these characters will converge in Attica for a bloody, disgusting finale where even I was surprised who was left dead and who lived to fuck up another day.

It should be said that this book is for strictly the hardcore. I don't mean that simply in the sense that the reader should enjoy sex, violence, and four-letter words (though that certainly helps), but in that the reader should have a fair amount of knowledge about present day crime writers. There are countless references to Bruen and Starr's colleagues and their books, even a reference to the world's greatest bookstore: Richard Katz's Mystery One in Milwaukee. That being said, most of the discussion is in reference to the sexiness of both Lee Child and Laura Lippman.

But, hell, why even review this book? If you could handle Bust and Slide, you probably already have your greasy mitts around The Max. Like the two books previous, The Max is what happens when you let two of the most talented and exciting writers in noir let loose and have a whole lot of sick nasty fun together on the page.

Thankfully, Charles Ardai and Hard Case Crime are crazy enough to publish their efforts.

CATCHING UP #1: Ken Bruen's LONDON BOULEVARD

ABOUT THE "CATCHING UP" SERIES:

I keep up better than most when it comes to all the new noir stuff that's coming out, but even I miss some things. The books and movies in this series will not be brand-spanking new like everything else I cover but older stuff, stuff I missed when they first came out. Enjoy!

LONDON BOULEVARD by Ken Bruen

I've read all the series stuff by Bruen (Jack Taylor, Sgt. Brant) and all of his Hardcase books with Jason Starr (The MAX is on the way!!!) and even his standalone (also his best) novel American Skin, but I have missed a lot of his older work. London Boulevard isn't all that old comparatively, but it ain't new either. Anyway, it caught my eye because over at http://www.kenbruen.com/ it was posted that The Departed screenwriter William Monahan is adapting London Boulevard for the talking pictures. I loved The Departed, I love Bruen, I love movies. The book seemed like it could do no wrong!

And it doesn't, really. It is top-notch Bruen storytelling. It has all his little tricks and quirks on display and it's a lot of fun...but there are just some things in there that are absolute...what-the-fuck-is-that-in-here-for kind of things. Okay, I'm not making much sense. Let me back up a little bit.

Mitchell has just gotten out of prison after serving some solid years for beating a guy within an inch of his life. Upon his release he has it pretty easy. A villain friend of his named Norton has given him a sweet flat to stay in situated in a trendy part of London. He saves some woman from muggers and she sets him up with a cush job at a rich old actress's house as a handyman where he's paid a boatload. Said old actress is pretty hot-looking for her years and she likes to hop on him now and again. All in all, not a bad gig.

But you've heard this set up before, you know that something evil is just around the corner.

Norton's boss wants to pull him back into the fold of evil once more, and Mitchell is up for it. To add gas to the fire, he falls for a pretty little colleen and the old actress fuck buddy and her strange eastern European butler aren't fans of such an occurence. And his daffy sister Briony is up to her old crazy ways once more as well. All of this escalates in the out-of-left-field way that Bruen has become known for, leading to many murdered and much loss for our hero.

All in all, that's a pretty good story. A little old-school, but in Bruen's hands it's swift and fresh. Mitchell is a good character who, naturally, loves crime novels and pop music and likes to remind the reader of said affinities over and over. If I wasn't such a big fan of Bruen I would have probably LOVED this book. But since I'm seasoned, jaded, I was a little let down.

The main reason is this: What is with the old actress and her crazy European butler? The storyline has a couple variations from it, but all in all it is fucking William Holden, Erich Von Stroheim and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd. And he's obviously trying to make the connection. I mean, the book is called London Blvd. But why? What does he really add to the story that really warrants a retelling? I can't figure out why he was so enamored with the idea, why he felt he had to throw in his two-cents on a classic movie.

Aside from that things are mostly solid. The bad guys weren't really all that threatening in the end, but the "twist" makes that clear why that was Bruen's choice. The story was a little predictable but Bruen's style and choices always make that a non-issue. He can take something old and make it exciting again. Just look at what he did for P.I novels and police procedurals with the Taylor and Brant series.

But my question is this: Out of all the awesome shit that Bruen has done over the years, why is this the one to adapt? William Monahan wrote a mean, edgy script for one of the best crime movies in recent years so he's obviously got a plan up his sleeve. But seriously, what is it?

I mean, I'm glad that nobody is attempting to flat-out remake Sunset Blvd because that would just make thousands angry (and no money). But if that was your intent, to make something kind of similar to Sunset Blvd, why choose something that has essentially the same story within it, while surrounded by some pretty good peripheral crimes as well? Okay, looking back on that last sentence, I may have just answered my own question. But I really think that without the narrator, the written style, that this will be hard to make a decent movie out of. I mean, all of Bruen's books are that way, where if you just make it about the events it doesn't really give your the point or even the flavor, but this one especially. Out of all the Bruen books I'd like to see adapted (even if they ended up shitty), this one would undoubtedly be last on the list.

That being said, there isn't a book on that list I wouldn't be first in line for at the movies.

KEN BRUEN'S CROSS

Jack Taylor is still taking all the punishment Ken Bruen can think up in his dirty little mind in Cross, the sixth novel in the Jack Taylor P.I. series. At the end of the previous novel Priest I recall thinking to myself that at this point it would actually be more shocking if something really blissfully wonderful happened to Taylor instead of something soul-crushing. That may happen in a later book but certainly not in Cross.

A boy has been crucified in Galway and lesbian policewoman Ridge asks Taylor for a hand with the investigation. Taylor certainly has time for it, seeing how he's given up the drink and does nothing with his days but feel the agony of guilt over the shooting of his surrogate son, an incident that he was responsible for. But this being a Bruen novel, the investigation takes a backseat to the way life seems to fuck you every chance it gets.

Bruen is a genuine original in the copycat world of noir. He seamlessly infuses post-modern self-consciousness with the beloved cliches of the hardboiled detective to create something all his own. The prose is tight, the atmosphere blacker than black, the story is organic but filled with violence, and above all: the books are darkly hilarious. Jack Taylor, along with being one of the most depressive characters of all time, also has a rapid-fire wit on par with Dennis Lehane's Patrick Kenzie. Even though this series is all about guilt and the loss of innocence, you can't help but be entertained by Jack's sense of humor. Jack's willingness to take his coal-black brand of justice all the way doesn't hurt either.

But when it comes down to it, I can't really reccomend Cross unless you've read everything that came before it. The order of the series is as follows:

The Guards
The Killing of the Tinkers
The Magdalen Martyrs
The Dramatist
Priest
Cross

I really consider them all one work. It almost makes no sense to read them otherwise. And if you like Taylor, you should try Bruen's slightly cheekier, crazier series about Seargant Brant, a corrupt Brixton policeman with no regard for rules or social decorum. In order they are:

The White Trilogy
Blitz
Vixen
Calibre
Ammunition

There is a lot to read in the Bruen oeuvre (yeah, I'm a douche) but don't be intimidated, his books are short and sweet and are easy to plow through in just a few days (hours, if you have an afternoon free). Now if only the cover prices would reflect the length...fucking trade paperbacks.